And You Shall Know Them By Their Bitter Fruits
by x918x
Summary: Edward saves Bella from her glue-fueled downward spiral and gives her a gift.
1. Chapter 1

Bella coughed, the harsh chemical scent of glue burning her nostrils as she pulled the paper bag back from her face and gasped for air. The world was receding from her, shrinking to a pinpoint surrounded by infinite inky blackness. Her whole body was vibrating.

"Oh yeah," she said. "That did it."

Her voice sounded thin and tinny like it was reverberating in a tin can. Her ears felt full of cotton. She leaned back in her chair and dimly perceived herself losing balance and falling over, but it was all so far away, in a tiny window at the end of a long tunnel. Hitting the hardwood floor was a slight pressure on the back of her head, a distant echo of pain. What did pain feel like anyway? What was it to have a body?

The blackness overcame her completely and her thoughts echoed and repeated endlessly, the memory of words turning into looping gibberish. There was no meaning anymore, just the rhythm of words in her head like childish music in a foreign tongue, sing-song and mocking.

In this utter collapse of comprehension, moments no longer followed one another in polite order but crashed together in a jumble. Time itself had shattered. This was it. This was eternity. Bella did not exist. Only terror existed now. Forever.

And then she heard a word she recognized in the echoing gibberish.

"Bella."

The sound, an actual sound now, was too intense against the background of mere thoughts.

"Bella, get up."

Someone was grabbing her, pulling her up. She had a body again.

The first thing that registered was the dull ache in the back of her head, followed quickly by a sensation of weightlessness, followed quickly by a bony shoulder digging into her side. Then the creak of a window and the cold rush of nighttime air like a splash of cold water across her numb face.

"Whuhh..." she tried to speak and failed. Numbness was receding from her body, replaced by a throbbing tingle.

I'm being carried, she thought. Slung over someone's shoulder and carried like limp bag of meat and bone. She was outside now, moving into the forest.

As her mind returned to her body, she started to struggle a little, thrashing her new-found limbs until the body under her finally stopped running, knelt, and put her down.

"What is..." she said. "Where am I?"

She was staring up through the trees into a dark sky, the pale glow of the moon radiating from behind the clouds.

"Bella, it's me," the voice sounded familiar.

"Edward?" she slurred, squinting to make out the dark silhouette crouched over here.

"That's right," he said, his voice soft and emotionless. "I have something I need to show you."

"So you just grab me out of my room in the middle of the night? What the heck?" Bella struggled to push herself up onto her elbows. Everything was spinning around her. She could make out Edward's pale face in the moonlight. He looked utterly blank.

"I know what you were doing," he said. "It's not good for you."

"Who gives a heck what's 'good for me'?" said Bella. "The alternative to death is becoming just another freaking adult like my parents. I'd rather go brain-dead from huffing glue than do that. Why did you even come tonight anyway? I told you to just leave me alone, remember?"

"None of that matters now," said Edward. "I have something I need to show you."

"Do you even care when I tell you to leave me alone?" said Bella. "Do you even-"

She let out a startled scream. Edward's face had split vertically down the middle. He winced and the two halves of his face peeled back and away, opening the front of this head like a split orange.

"Dude!" said Bella. "That's super gross."

"Reach in," Edward's voice gurgled out from somewhere inside of the slimy red cavern of his head.

"Uh, I'm not doing that," said Bella. She chuckled nervously, repulsed but slightly intrigued.

"Reach your hand into my face," said Edward. "I have something I must give you."

Bella felt a slight smile on her face as she leaned forward. Edward's split-open face pulsated, the deep red interior nearly black in the moonlight.

"Something you've been storing inside your own head? Or what?" said Bella.

"It's a surprise," Edward burbled.

Bella winced as she reached into the warm, wet crevasse.

"Keep going," Edward's voice was muffled by the hand stuffed into his face hole.

"Oh my god," said Bella. She looked up and away, squinting up at the pale blue clouds as her hand wriggled further into Edward's head gash. "Wait… I think… I think I got something."

"Mmfffmmrrrm," said Edward.

"It's round and smooth," said Bella. "Is that the thing?"

"Mrfmmrmr!" said Edward.

Bella chewed on her lip, trying to get her fingers around the slippery round object. "Aha!" she grabbed it and tugged.

"MRRRFMF!" said Edward.

"Hold still!" Bella put her foot into his chest and pushed backwards, dragging her arm back up through layers of goo.

Edward tumbled backwards and her arm wrenched free with a wet suction sound and she fell backwards onto a soft bed of pine needles, laughing.

"Oh my god," she said. "So gross."

Somewhere in the forest, an owl hooted.

Edward groaned, pushing himself up into a sitting position.

"It's an egg!" said Bella.

Edward grabbed the sides of his face and forced them back together, pinching the two fleshy edges together in the middle until they started to reform.

"Bleh," he said as the two halves of his mouth came back together. "An egg. Place it on the ground between us please."

Bella set the egg down on a pile of leaves at roughly the halfway point between where they both sat.

Edward leaned over to the side and picked up a medium-sized rock. He raised it up over his head and brought it down on the egg with a short sharp cry.

Bella winced.

Night birds scattered from the trees.

Edward lifted up the rock and tossed it away. It thudded dully on the forest floor.

Filled with nervous anticipation, Bella leaned forward to inspect the shattered egg.

"Is that..." she said. "Is that a key?"

Edward nodded. "Go ahead. Pick it up."

Brushing off the egg yolk and pieces of egg shell, Bella lifted up the key and dangled it in front of her, holding it by its key ring.

"Wait… it's a car key," she said. She squinted at it, then gasped. "It's a key to a Lexus, isn't it?"

Edward smiled at her.

"Did you get me a Lexus?" said Bella.

"The Lexus grew naturally from the Earth," said Edward. "Much in the same way the key grew naturally in an egg inside my head. But yes, it is yours now."

Bella lunged forward and wrapped her arms around his lean and muscular body, hugging him tightly.

"Oh! Is it nearby?" she said.

"Yep," said Edward.

"Can we take it out for a drive?"

"Oh yeah," he said.


	2. Chapter 2

The Lexus sped down the midnight highway, "Burning" by Robbie Rivera and Axwell featuring Suzan Brittan blaring on the four hundred and thirty watt speakers, the heated seats with ComfortPro lumbar support vibrating on the maximum massage setting and _Finding Nemo_ playing on the dual screen passenger and driver projector screens on the back of each flip down mirror and the additional mini screen embedded in the dashboard. Deer leapt gracefully over the car as it sped down the dark country road and Bella cheered and laughed, forcing the accelerator down into the microfiber memory gel core floor mat.

"Do you know the only thing that could make this night more perfect?" Bella yelled to be heard over the blaring harmonized guitars.

"What?" yelled Edward.

"You know what the only thing that would make this night more perfect is?" yelled Bella.

"What's that?" yelled Edward.

"A bag of glue over my freaking mouth and nose!" yelled Bella. She laughed.

Edward shook his head. "No," he said. "That's a poor people drug."

He pressed the button to open the automatic glove compartment and pulled out a large plastic bag full of white powder.

"What's that?" yelled Bella. "Cocaine?"

"Ultracocaine," corrected Edward. "It's four times more expensive than regular cocaine."

"Heck yeah!" yelled Bella. "Get that up in my nose!"

And then there was a deafening crash of shattering glass and metal and Bella found herself flying through the air in slow motion.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of gray fur and then she felt a damp mouth with sharp teeth close gently on the back of her neck and then she hit the ground and was dragged into the bushes by a wolf.

"Ah!" she yelped.

The wolf spit her out. Bella clapped her hands over her ears as the car exploded, shaking the ground and vibrating the air around them. A massive orange fireball lit up the night.

"Jeez!" said Bella.

"Are you ok?" said the wolf.

"Jacob? Is that you?" said Bella.

"Yes," said the wolf. "Did I save you on time? Were you hurt?"

"I think I'm ok," said Bella. "Did Edward get incinerated just now?"

"Probably," said Jacob.

"What happened? Why'd the car crash?" said Bella.

"You swerved off the road and hit a big rock," said the wolf. "Luckily, I'd been running alongside the car for the past fifty miles, keeping an eye on you. When I saw the car hit the rock, I leapt up just in time to catch you."

Bella stood up and brushed the pine needles off of her skinny jeans. The once-quiet night was now filled with the roaring crackling sound of the car burning. She squinted against the bright flames and climbed unsteadily up the side of the gully towards the road. She slipped on some gravel and fell.

"Careful!" said Jacob, running up to press his damp dog nose into her face.

"I'm fine," said Bella. "We have to go check on Edward."

"He's a vampire though," said Jacob. "He can't be burned with normal fire."

"I guess?" said Bella.

She slipped again and slid down the hill a little bit. She laughed bitterly and stayed on the ground, burying her face in her arms.

"I'm so sick of all this stuff," she said.

Jacob sniffed her face and then rested his head on her head.

"I know," he said. "I keep offering to take you away from here."

Bella sighed. "Yeah..." she said.

"Come on," said Jacob, licking his snout. "Come up with me to my cabin. I have a cabin up on the mountain, in the woods. I'll take you there."

Bella didn't say anything. She breathed in deeply, her nose filling with the smell of dirt.

"You can ride on my back like a horse," said Jacob.

"Ok, I guess," said Bella.

She climbed onto the wolf and buried her fingers in his shaggy fur. He stood up and began to run through the woods. Bella lay low on his back, the cool night air blowing her hair as they ran further and further from the burning car. The tree branches whipped past her head and small woodland creatures panicked and fled as Jacob sprinted through the woods on his long wolf legs. The moon had come out from behind the clouds and the trees were illuminated now in a crisp pale light, all looking ghostly and still, disturbed only by the rushing wind of Jacob's run.

Time lost its meaning and Bella felt herself fall into a trance, mesmerized by the endless rush of branches past her face until suddenly they burst out into a clearing and ran across a grassy field to a rustic log cabin, standing in the center of the circular grove.

Jacob slowed to a trot as he approached the cabin door. As he finally came to a stop on the doorstep, Bella climbed off his back and stood awkwardly to the side as he pawed at the door. The door creaked open to reveal the grizzled face of Sam.

"Oh, hi Sam," said Bella. "It's been a while."

"Bella," said Sam. "What a surprise. Pleasant, I'm sure."

"How is it that Jacob is a wolf right now and you aren't?" said Bella. "Shouldn't you both change at the same time?"

Sam shrugged. "The transformation is nature and nature is not a wind-up clock," he said. "The laws of nature are not laws at all. They are but tendencies, regularities that can be noticed. For do not forget that a law unenforced is meaningless. And nature has no cops."

Bella nodded politely.

"So what's up, guys?" she said. "You got any glue or what?"

They sat up into the early morning hours, drinking Jäger and mushroom tea, sometimes dropping shots of Jäger into the tea and chugging it.

"The mushrooms are normally poisonous," Jacob explained. "It's only after a reindeer eats the mushroom and pees out the chemical from the mushroom that it becomes drinkable for humans."

"So what you're saying is," said Bella, "this is actual reindeer piss tea."

"With the mushroom chemical in it, yes," said Jacob.

"But it's actually piss," said Bella.

"Yes," said Jacob.

Sam was placing cards on the ground in a wheel shape: a circle of cards with lines of cards radiating out from the center like spokes. At the center of the spokes, he placed down a card. It had a picture of a chariot drawn in an obscure and archaic style.

"The chariot represents money," he said. "Money is drawing a hard lump from your heart, like the horses. Like horses madly galloping, tied to an old tooth. Like pulling a tooth from deep in your rotted heart."

"Or like pulling an egg from a split-open head," murmured Bella. She stared into the flickering flames of the fireplace. The cabin smelled like smoke and wet dog.

Jacob picked up a Jäger shot in his jaws and dropped it into her mason jar of reindeer piss tea.

"Slam it!" he cried.

Bella threw back the tea and Jäger and swallowed it in three big gulps. The shot glass clinked against her teeth.

"I'm saying we need to get some money," said Sam. "That's what the cards are saying."

"Ugh, you sound like my mom," Bella said. She stood up unsteadily and kicked the circle, sending cards scattering across the floor. Sam shot her an angry look, his green eyes flashing. "I don't want to talk about stupid money. Money money money," she said in a mocking high-pitched tone. "I want to do something! I want to, like, dance or something. I don't give a heck about money anymore. I don't care if I starve or die. Somebody play some freaking music already!"

"Hey, yeah!" said Jacob, sitting up abruptly, his paws scrabbling on the dusty wooden floorboards. "Grab that lute, Sam! I'd do it, but I don't have any fingers at the moment."

"Ugh, if I must." Sam said, but he was smiling slyly. He swigged some Jäger from the bottle and picked up the lute. He gave it a strum, then another, and then he was strumming and plucking with vigor, alternating effortlessly between strumming and plucking to make a lurching, tumbling rhythm.

Laughing, Bella grabbed Jacob's front paws in each of her hands, dragging him up onto his hind legs. Jacob let out a startled bark and then laughed too. They danced a spiraling dance around the cabin floor, laughing.

Sam stomped in time and began to sing, his voice sharp and quavering:

_Whilom the nyght gan sik'ly theen,_

_the moon wenden o'er earth did shyne,_

_no drede the sely hares doon sterte,_

_eek everich wight o' thylke kynde._

_Cer-tes the pur-raile nere a-were,_

_so lew-ed they, yn lowe degree,_

_the lust o' byast ther nigh and far,_

_they nyste the sweven, _

_fayne and free._

(And so on.)

As the night wore on, the songs blended together and Bella danced and twirled, her body moving as if on its own, the limbs pulled inevitably into each new position, not like a puppet on a string, but like a water rushing in to fill a newly opened space or air squeezed from one part of a balloon into another, flowing like water one minute, twisting like the bulbous joints of a balloon animal the next, her arms like balloons and her fingers like smaller balloons, Jacob's smiling dog face puffing up at her, a thin shell of a face no thicker than the light falling on its surface, the shadows cast by the flickering fire like black cracks in the light-shell, revealing the empty space inside, Sam's head bouncing and swaying as he sang, like a jack in a box on a spring, bouncing side to side and bulbous, puffing outward, the whole world puffing out and spherical, like everything she saw was just a giant bubble filled with smaller bubbles, her body stuck headfirst in this world-bubble, the neck and legs protruding out into some abyss beyond, always just out of sight as the bubble moved with her eyes, with her head, no matter how she moved her eyes and head there it was and she spun and twirled and laughed and the laughter cascaded endlessly and suddenly it was dark and she was running and laughing and behind her she heard yelling and barking but she just laughed and ran and ran.


	3. Chapter 3

Bella awoke some unknown time later, sprawled out in a bush, dragged into consciousness by the desperate need to pee. She groaned and tried to sit up, squinting against the early morning sun. She rolled over, rolled out of the bush onto her stomach, and pushed herself up. Shivering in the chilly morning air, the sensation of pervasive coldness quickly joining the sensation of needing to pee, she rubbed her cold hands together and blew on them. It seemed wrong to pee on the same bush that she had slept in. Muttering to herself, she searched for a more suitable bush.

As she squatted by a gnarled tree, she watched a caterpillar crawl across a low-hanging leaf. The caterpillar was green with bright purple dots that seemed to glow, though that was probably just the residue of mushroom in her system. The caterpillar nibbled a leaf.

"How's that leaf?" Bella said. "Is it worth it? Is it worth existing for?"

"Bella?" There was a muffled voice from down the hill to her left, coming from behind a bramble.

Bella stood up abruptly, pulling up her pants. She looked around for a big stick or something to swing.

"I think I heard her voice," the voice said. "Bella, is that you?"

"Edward?" said Bella.

The bramble parted gracefully like drapes and Edward stepped through into a beam of sunlight, shading his eyes. He turned over his shoulder and called out, "Found her!"

"I thought you might have burned up in the fire," said Bella.

"Vampires can't burn in normal fire," said Edward.

There was a crunching sound behind him and suddenly a crawling figure burst out from the shrubbery. Wrapped in burlap and twine, he rushed forward, clawing at the ground with wrinkled, bony fingers. Even his face was wrapped in burlap, with just a nose protruding from between the folds. Bella recoiled in horror.

"Gah!" She yelled.

The crawling man was yanked backwards on a leash. He sprawled on his back, flailing his limbs for a moment before regaining his footing.

"Cool it, would you?" A girl stepped out from the foliage, holding the other end of the crawling man's leash. "Sit!"

The crawling man crouched on his haunches. His head rotated and strained on his neck as he aggressively sniffed the air.

"What the heck?" said Bella. "Who is that?"

"Bella, this is Alice," said Edward. "Don't you remember Alice? You met before, though you may have been on glue at the time."

"No, dude, the freaking guy on the leash!" said Bella. "Of course I already know Alice."

Alice waved. "Hi, Bella!"

"Oh," Edward laughed. "You mean our sniffer? He's nobody. Just a sniffer."

"What do you mean 'sniffer?'" said Bella. "Like a human tracking dog or whatever? Are you out here tracking me with this weird sniffing guy like a dog?"

"Of course not, silly," said Alice.

"We were hoping we might find you," said Edward. "But that is not our main goal."

"We're out to get us some Ultracocaine," said Alice cheerfully, and then under her breath, gesturing at Edward: "since someone spilled the whole other bag in a car crash..."

"So he sniffs out the scent of Ultracocaine?" asked Bella.

"No he sniffs out the scent of the money we can use to buy the Ultracocaine," said Edward.

"UGH!" Bella groaned, rubbing her eyes. "What is it with everyone? I am so sick of hearing about money all the time. It's just all the time with this stuff."

"I think you have inherited negative thought patterns about money from your parents," said Edward. "It's why they're poor. I read a book about this once. If you think bad thoughts about money, it scares all the money away."

"Oh no," said Alice. "She isn't going to scare our money away, is she?"

Bella glared at her. "That's not how money works."

"Ah, but do you even know where money comes from?" Edward grinned a smug, fanged grin.

Bella flailed her arms in frustration. "Like banks or the government or whatever! Who cares!"

"No, no, where it comes from originally," said Edward. "Let me show you." He gestured for Alice to walk past him. "After you."

"Hyah!" cried Alice, shaking the leash. The burlap-wrapped man leapt up and lurched forward, sniffing and scrambling over broken branches and leaves, dragging Alice behind him as she whooped and laughed. Edward held out his hand to Bella.

"You know," said Bella, looking down at his hand for a moment and then taking it, "you get smug sometimes. And it's a little bit hot?" she said, "but it's mostly super annoying."

The sniffer scrabbled through the underbrush, dragging Alice along behind him. Alice giggled and tugged at the leash, nimbly avoiding roots and rocks underfoot. Edward followed her with long leaping strides. He occasionally tugged on Bella's hand and lifted her up each time she was about the stumble, her body turning supernaturally weightless at each tug.

"I don't know what the big hurry is," Bella muttered, but she had to silently admit that she did enjoy the brief weightless intervals. It felt nice to be a balloon again, even for just a few moments at a time.

Her mild enjoyment was cut short when Edward came to an abrupt stop and her face bounced off his bony shoulder.

"Ow, jeez!"

Edward turned and apologetically kissed Bella's injured cheek and her whole face went numb.

"I think we got something!" Alice cried.

The sniffer was pawing at the base of a large, old tree. Small muffled growls gurgled in his throat as he sniffed, scratching the bark with his fingernails.

"Down boy!" Alice yanked hard on the leash and the sniffer whimpered and fell back to her heel, rubbing his burlap-covered face against her calf.

Edward gave Bella's hand a squeeze and let it go. He walked up to the tree. He reached out and gently caressed it with his finger tips.

"Yesss," he sighed. "This will do nicely."

His mouth sprung open like a three ring binder full of teeth and he plunged his rows and rows of fangs into the tree, ripping out a huge chunk of bark.

Alice squealed with excitement and hurried to tie the sniffer's leash to a thick tree branch so that she could join in. She pounced on the old tree, clinging to it with her claw-like fingers and biting into the trunk over and over again, spitting out large chunks of bark and splintered wood.

Bella watched the gruesome scene with mild interest.

After a few seconds of biting, thick golden sap began to ooze from the wounded tree. This excited the two vampires even more, their eyes flashing with avarice. Edward thrust a hand into the tree and yanked out a sticky wad and hurled it to the ground with a splat. The sniffer yipped and reared up onto his legs, pawing at the air, his leash taut.

Bella moved slowly to where the wad had fallen. She leaned down to inspect it: a wad of twenty-dollar bills, clumped together with gobs of sap. She flinched at the thump of another cash-wad landing near her. Alice and Edward had stopped biting and were now rummaging around in the tree's guts, wrenching forth wad after wad of cash.

As suddenly as it had begun, the money harvest was over. The two vampires walked away from the ruin of the tree, gathering up the clumps of money, licking the sap off with their long, pointed tongues.

"And that," said Edward with a roguish grin, "is where money comes from." He offered Bella a damp twenty.

Bella took the bill gingerly between two fingers and inspected it. "They never mentioned this part in civics class."

"It's not something that most humans know about," said Edward. "This knowledge makes you special now. In addition to all the other ways that you're special."

"But how does the money get to people then?" said Bella.

"Simple!" said Alice, wiping the sap from her lips. She walked over to the sniffer, saying: "Down!" The sniffer sat obediently as she untied the leash. Then she grabbed a fold in the burlap wrapped around his head and began to unwrap it, revealing the face of an old man. "You can get up now, Carl."

Carl stood up and dusted himself off. "Yes, mistress."

"You did good today, Carl," said Alice. She handed him a damp wad of money. "Go out and get yourself something nice."

"Yes, mistress." Carl nodded and turned, striding off into the woods with tattered burlap hanging off his wrinkled body.

"And thus the economy is revitalized," said Edward. "It's the circle of life."

"And the rest?" said Bella.

"The rest is ours, girl!" said Alice. "We earned it."

"Circle of life," Edward reiterated.

"Now let's go get those drugs!" Alice said.

"Finally," said Bella. "Finally somebody's making sense."


	4. Chapter 4 & 5

They bought a large baggie of Ultracocaine from a tall man in a tan trench coat. He wore no hat, but his face was shrouded in shadow despite the sunlight. Alice dipped a finger in the baggie and rubbed some of the sparkling white powder on her gums, nodded approvingly and handed the baggie to Edward. Then they left the forest and walked back into town.

They hitched a ride in an old red pickup truck with chicken cages in the back. Bella winced at the stink of chickens but Alice and Edward just grinned at each other.

"How rustic," Edward commented.

The truck dropped them off in front of Edward's apartment building, a lone skyscraper with dark tinted windows, towering high above the two-story family homes and their white picket fences that made up the rest of the town.

Riding up the elevator to Edward's penthouse suite, Edward took out the bag of Ultracocaine and started scooping up bumps with the corner of his Visa Obsidian Crystal Premium card.

"Ugh, I hate cocaine," Bella muttered, sniffing up a bump.

Alice giggled. "But this is Ultracocaine, silly!"

"What about the crash, though?" said Bella. "I always crash sooo bad."

"I guess you'll just have to keep doing more," said Edward, with a grin.

"I guess," Bella rubbed at her rapidly numbing nose. "I might as well just keep doing it. I hope I OD or whatever. Just promise you won't bite me and make me immortal."

Edward grinned at her with pointy teeth.

Bella punched his arm. "Promise! I want to be dead so bad, you guys. If you make me stay alive past my death, I won't ever forgive you!"

"I wouldn't turn you against your wishes, you know that," said Edward. "I am a gentleman, after all. It's my brand."

The elevator dinged and the gold-plated doors slid open to reveal a massive apartment. The living room was crisscrossed with white leather couches, carefully arranged to look haphazard on a plush white carpeting.

"Take off your shoes," said Edward. "And socks. The carpet is angora rabbit fur."

"But you won't even get to enjoy being dead," said Alice. "Because you won't be anyone."

"Don't say that," said Bella. "And anyway, that's the point. I want to be no one."

"Seriously, take off your socks, too," said Edward. "You absolutely need to feel this with your toes."

"Feel what, the poor dead bunnies that you skinned?" said Bella, then winced. "Is this really dead bunnies, Edward? That's really sad."

"No, no!" Edward said. "I extracted their souls first. Before they were skinned. But then I put the souls back in. But! They were unconscious for that part. And while they were unconscious, I used blood magic to regrow their skins even fluffier than ever. And they didn't wake up until after all that was done."

"That still sounds really sad and mean," said Bella.

"I assure you, it's quite ethical," said Edward.

"But you won't get to enjoy not being anyone," said Alice. "Because there won't be a 'you' to enjoy not being."

"That's… the… point!" said Bella, rubbing her nose aggressively. "How are you not getting this?"

"Um, sorry," Alice rolled her eyes. "I think you're the one who's not getting it. You're imagining a version of you that gets to enjoy not existing."

"No," Bella gestured angrily. "I'm imagining just not existing at all."

"But there's still a you who's imagining it," said Alice.

"Yes, right now there is," said Bella. "That's the problem I'm trying to solve."

"But the fact that there is always a you who's doing the imagining means that..."

"Girls!" Edward snapped. "Ladies! Please. This is a party."

"Some party," said Alice. "Where is everybody?" She flopped down on one of the white leather couches and crossed her arms.

"Emmett and Rosalie said they were going to be here at eight," said Edward. "What time is it now?"

"Do I look like a freaking clock?" said Alice.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Bella felt a light switch switch on inside her. It was as if she'd been inside a dark closet all day and suddenly the door opened and revealed a sunny room with all the windows open, a cool breeze blowing through the drapes.

"Oh shit," she said. She laughed. "Is this what normal people feel like all the time?"

Edward looked at her, confused, then saw the look in her eyes and smiled. "It's starting to kick in, I see."

"Yeah," said Bella. "I think so."

"Normal people wished they felt like this," said Alice. "They can't afford it, babe."

"Let's do more!" said Bella.

Edward laughed. "Don't be ridiculous," he said. "You can't want another bump already. Not without… some tequila shots first!"

He strode across the living room to the kitchen in large bold steps and Alice sprung up from the couch chanting "Shots! Shots! Shots!" and Bella laughed and followed them into the kitchen.

Part 5

"So basically," Bella was saying, her voice raised to be heard above the din of drunken yelling and music, "I kept stealing xanax and box wine from my mom. Like every night. And then finally I was like, wait: I'm basically turning myself into a copy of my mom by stealing from her all the time. You know?"

"That's so true," Rosalie said loudly back.

"So that's when I started huffing glue instead," said Bella. "Like, at least I can be a different kind of dumb human, you know?"

"Damn, girl," said Rosalie. "That's deep."

The penthouse was packed with vampires now. A man with the head of a black goat played some kind of Middle Eastern reed instrument near the beer pong table, prancing in his high black boots, harmonizing with the screamo that blasted over the stereo. A naked vampire danced on top of a table that was really more of a polished marble slab, a three-foot fuzzy white caterpillar crawling over her arms like a living feather boa.

"I feel like you're making fun of me, but you're probably not. I dunno. Cocaine makes me talk to much." Bella laughed awkwardly. She took a large swig of her vodka redbull.

Rosalie reached out and touched her forearm. "Babe. Don't talk yourself down like that. Weakening your ego just makes you vulnerable to black magic. You are power! Your whole mind and body is power! The universe is a flux of particles, melting every instant, but your body stays whole and strong. How? Through sheer force of will, girl! Your atoms are a clenched fist of power, just punching the face of entropy! Punching it over and over!"

"Don't you get tired though?" said Bella.

"Only when the Ultracocaine wears off," Rosalie said. She laughed.

A deafening cheer exploded from the beer pong table and Bella looked over to see Edward grinning with his arms raised over his head in triumph. His opponent, a young vampire that Bella didn't recognize, doubled over with his head in his hands, a ping pong ball bobbing up and down in the single red solo cup in front of him.

"That's right, James! Bounce shot! No rebuttal!" Edward yelled. "Who's next?"

Just as he began to high-five his bros, James reared back and let out a whistling shriek like metal being torn apart. Bella winced, covering her ears but still feeling the sound vibrate in her teeth and then James leapt over the beer pong table at Edward, knocking aside red solo cups and splashing the onlookers with beer as they laughed with tooth-bristling mouths and eager black-pitted eyes.

Moving so quickly that the human eye could barely register it, Edward spun around and caught the lunging vampire in midair. James hissed and clawed at Edward's face and Edward slammed him down onto the plastic folding table with a crash as the crowed hooted and cheered.

Bella pushed her way forward through the mass of bodies towards the fight. Over shoulders and through gaps in the crowd, she caught glimpses of violence: Edward flinching back as James's long yellow nails tore bloodless gashes across his face; James writhing out of Edward's choke hold but failing to avoid the knee strike to his solar plexus; James biting into Edward's thigh as Edward drove his elbow into the back of James's head over and over.

Just as Bella was breaking through the final layer of crowd, another deafening cheer erupted around her and she shoved past a particularly tall vampire wearing platform shoes just in time to see Edward punching his fist into the other vampire's face, burying it deep in his skull, and ripping his spine out through his mouth. The vampire's bloodless flesh sloughed off the bone like rotten chicken, crumpling into a pile on floor. Edward held the spine up above his head, shaking it triumphantly as the crowd roared. He tossed the spine into the crowd and vampires pounced on it, scrambling to grab vertebrae as souvenirs.

"Edward!" cried Bella, running up and grabbing his arm. "What the heck? Are you ok?"

Edward's smile wrinkled the claw marks in his face. "I'd say so," he said. "I'm the one who still has the spine in his body, so I feel pretty ok about that."

"Curse you, Edward!" A wet voice growled and Bella turned to see the spineless pile of vampire meat writhing upwards, struggling to hold its noodly torso aloft. "I'll make you pay for this!"

"Come on, James!" Rosalie said from where she was stooping to pick up and stack red solo cups. "You lost fair and square! Twice!"

"Yeah, you freaking jerk!" Bella reared back and kicked the wriggling vampire squarely in his de-spined chest.

James hissed and flopped backwards and hush suddenly fell over the room. The air felt heavy and still. Even the goat-headed man had gone quiet, lowering the reed instrument from his mouth and turning to stare at Bella. The entire crowed turned to her with expressions like they'd just witnessed a filthy stray dog pee itself on the carpet.

"What?" said Bella.

Edward leaned in and whispered in her ear: "Bella, you aren't supposed to kick a vampire when he's down."

"What?" Bella yelled, making Edward wince. "You rip the guy's spine out and it's no problem and then I get in trouble for a little kick?"

"But he had a spine when Edward ripped it out," said Alice. "You kicked a guy with no spine. Not cool, Bella."

The flesh-pile on the carpet that was James gurgled angrily.

"Well sor-ry, ok?" Bella felt like she was about to cry. Everyone was staring at her. "I just thought vampires were all, like, amoral and only cared about power and violence and stuff."

"You can be amoral and still act classy about it," said Edward. "If we didn't act classy when we perpetrated our acts of extreme violence, we'd be no better than..." he trailed off.

"No better than what?" Bella pushed him. "No better than humans?"

Edward sighed. "Listen, it's not your fault. Nobody taught to you how-"

"Oh my god," Bella cut him off. "You pity me, don't you? You never thought I was cool or were in love with me or anything like that. You just felt sorry for me!"

"Bella, that's not-"

"Maybe you thought I was cute the way a dirty stray dog is cute because of how dumb and pathetic it is. That's all I've ever been to you, isn't it? A pet that's cute because it's dumb. Well, screw you, Edward!" She shoved him again and turned to shoulder her way through the crowd. Vampires parted in front of her, wrinkling their noses and avoiding touching her as much as possible.

"Bella!" Ed ward called after her. "You know it's not like that!"

"No, guess what, I don't know that!" Bella yelled back over her shoulder. She frantically wiped at the tears running down her cheeks. "Get out of my way, you jerks!"

She stumbled through the crowd to the bathroom, pushed her way inside and slammed the door behind her. She put down the toilet seat cover and sat down on it. She buried her face in her hands and cried.


	5. Chapter 6

Someone knocked at the bathroom door and Bella yelled: "Go away!"

Sitting in the bathroom and crying, she felt so small and cold. She stood up and flung open the medicine cabinet and started rummaging through it, looking for any pills she could take or chemicals she could huff but there was nothing in it but vitamins and essential oils.

Someone knocked at the door again.

"Go away!" she yelled.

"Bella, come out and do some more Ultracocaine with us," said Edward through the door. "You're only like this because you're crashing. You get really upset when you crash, remember?"

"Shut up! You don't know anything about me or about anything!" Bella yelled. She threw some vitamin bottles into the tub with a clatter and dropped herself back down onto the toilet seat. She squeezed her head in her hands. Pain was radiating up from her neck and across her whole head. "Just go away!"

She squeezed her eyes shut hard and tried to focus on the black space behind her eyes, but without the glue fumes, she just couldn't get lost in it. Her body was very real she was stuck in it and everything hurt.

After a few minutes she heard muffled screamo music start up from behind the door. Apparently the party was going to go on without her. She couldn't even ruin the party by blocking access to the bathroom because Edward's apartment surely had multiple bathrooms. The whole party would continue and it wouldn't matter at all that she was in here instead of out there.

Then she heard another sound, from the opposite direction. A light tapping from the window above her head. She ignored it at first, but then the tapping happened again, louder. She looked up at the frosted glass. There was a barely perceptible dark shape silhouetted in the moonlight.

Bella stood up and opened the window.

"Hey!" Jacob greeted her, smiling. He was in human form.

"What the heck, Jacob?" said Bella. She peered tentatively out the window. The cold night wind whistled by the skyscraper, rustling the treetops far below. "How did you even get up here?"

"Ladder!" Jacob said. He was climbing up a wooden ladder that stretched from the ground sixty-six floors below, up past the penthouse bathroom window and further up, disappearing into the moonlit clouds above.

Bella sniffed and wiped her eyes. "I guess so, huh. How'd you get a ladder so tall?"

"Sam helped me with it!" Jacob pointed downward. "Working together, it wasn't even that hard to lift up."

Bella leaned out the bathroom window and was hit by sudden, intense vertigo as her brain finally grasped how high up they were. Several stories down, Sam was climbing up with a lute strapped to his back.

"Hi, Sam!" Bella called.

He leaned back on the ladder, letting go with one hand to wave with the other. Seeing him do this made Bella queasy but she tried to ignore it.

"We're climbing up to the moon," said Jacob. "Wanna come?"

"Why? What's on the moon?" said Bella.

"Oh, it's super great up there!" said Jacob. "Up there, it's a full moon all the time so you can always be a werewolf. You never have to be human again. Well, not you I mean. But us. And there's plenty of space with no one to bother you and you can eat as much moon meat as you want!"

Bella laughed. "Moon meat?"

"So I hear, anyway," said Jacob. "I've never actually been up there."

"It's true," said Sam, climbing up to just below Jacob's feet. "The moon meat grows on the backs of unrecognizable animals that sprout up from the ground, like arches, buried at the hips and at the shoulders. You can just rip fresh meat off with your teeth any time you want and it just grows back. And it's always fresh."

"Isn't it cold up there?" said Bella.

Jacob gestured to his backpack. "We got blankets. You should come with us! It'll be fun!"

"And we can just live up there and hang out and not be bothered by anyone? That does sound pretty great." Bella rubbed her nose thoughtfully. "But no drugs up there, I guess."

"Drugs are a palliative for the ills of the Earth," said Sam. "Without the stress of growing up or working a job or paying rent or fitting into society's various expectations, you won't need drugs at all."

"Well," said Bella, "I'm not entirely sure I believe that. But it sounds nice up there."

"I know, right?" said James.

"I'm going to level with you, though, Bella," said Sam. "It's going to be tougher for you. You can't just rip moon meat straight off with your teeth like we can."

"I can use a knife or something," said Bella. "I don't know if there's one in the bathroom, but I can probably sneak out into the kitchen."

"What I'm saying is..." Sam started to say.

"It's all good," said James. "We brought a pretty sick hunting knife with like a reindeer horn for a handle."

"Listen!" Sam yelled abruptly and just then, as if summoned by his cry, a huge white owl burst out of the darkness, talons outstretched, swooping down at them. Bella flinched, staggering back from the window, but by the time her brain had registered what had happened, Sam had already produced a dead mouse from his shirt pocket and the owl had plucked it nimbly from his fingers and flown away, disappearing back into the night.

Bella blinked in confusion.

"Listen," said Sam, calmly now, dusting the mouse fur off on his pants. "We're friends, the three of us. And there is no reason to believe we won't be friends later. But it's only going to be the three of us up there. And I don't know why it is, but sometimes friendships just don't last. People sometimes don't completely lock together like perfect puzzle pieces, even when everyone has good intentions. And there's no money up there. No money, just friends helping each other out. And the thing about money is, you don't have to rely only on friendships when you have money. With money, you can go down to the store and get food from someone who doesn't know you at all. Just a complete stranger. And they can be a bad person, or you can be a bad person, or both. But you can still trade that money for food. When friendships end, if you have money, there's still money. But if we're living on the moon with no money, when friendships end, then there's just nothing."

The wind gently rustled his hair. The ladder creaked, but did not sway.

"Jeez," said Jacob. "Why are you being such a downer right now?"

"I'm just being on the level," said Sam. "I want Bella to think about which she trusts more: friends, or money."

Bella thought about this. "I feel like in stories and movies, the answer is always supposed to be friends," she said. "But honestly? In real life, I don't know."

"Come on, guys, of course we'll still be friends later," said Jacob.

"I'm just saying, if you're asking me which I trust, friends or money," said Bella, "the answer is kind of neither."

Sam nodded.

"Guys!" Jacob gestured with one hand, holding onto the ladder with the other. "This isn't… I mean, it's not like… Listen, we can pull the ladder up with us onto the moon. It's not like we'll be trapped there forever. If we ever get mad at each other, or even if we just get bored, we can lower the ladder back down, come back to Earth, get jobs and make money or whatever. It's that easy. But can't we at least try? Can't we at least try living on the Moon for a while?"

Bella glanced back and forth between Jacob and Sam. Sam's brow was furrowed, but he was nodding.

"Is that true?" said Bella. "can we just pull the ladder up with us and use it to leave whenever we want?"

"I believe so," said Sam. "It's true, there's no reason it has to be an all or nothing proposition."

"Yeah, see?" said Jacob.

"Ok," said Bella. "Ok, sure, let's do it. You have to help me climb out the window though. And hold on to my arm or leg or whatever because, honestly, I don't want to fall all that way."

"Of course!" Jacob smiled.

"Don't get me wrong, I'd like the being dead part after," said Bella. "But the falling part seems really scary."

Bella carefully climbed out the window, away from the muffled screamo and vampire voices that radiated out through the bathroom door. Sam and Jacob helped her out onto the ladder and they started to climb. Far above the blue-green tinted suburbs they climbed, into the silver clouds that turned to mist as they drew nearer, never as solid as they looked. Soon they were inside the vague fog of the clouds, hardly able to see each other or even their own hands in front of them and then suddenly they were up above the clouds and looking down on a glowing white and fluffy plain, like rolling hills in new snow.

The moon grew bigger and bigger above and the higher they climbed, the more the Earth curved away and the more the moon flattened out and soon enough, they found themselves climbing down a ladder upside-down and flopping over onto the grey dusty ground of the Moon, bouncing in low gravity, laughing and struggling to stand upright. Jacob and Sam began to quiver and melt and their bodies flowed like quicksilver from human to dog and the two dogs leaped and leaped, over the arching moon meat torsos that glowed pale pink in the earthshine, leaping higher than any dog on earth could leap.

After their frolic, they came back to Bella and Sam dropped the lute off his back onto the ground in front of her with a poof of moon dust.

"Here," said Sam. "You play and I'll sing."

Bella tentatively picked up the lute. "I can't play very well," she said.

"Try," said Sam.

Bella tentatively placed her fingers on the fretboard and started to strum, softly at first but with growing energy and confidence as Sam sang in his shrill wolf voice:

_Far bylow, th' folde biwente,_

_and we, abone, did flote,_

_enviroun o'er the feendli burghs,_

_the brambles, breres, and clote,_

_yn deorne the ape of god lay hid,_

_a-castyng torne and wo,_

_but we, eadiz at-breken, zedde,_

_and tumble to and fro,_

_ne'er agayn to suffer yll,_

_the wikke werd bylowe._


End file.
